


and we will sing to everything the stories of where we have been

by jublis



Series: heirloom [8]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Suki (Avatar), Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Humor, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, It's barely mentioned but it's there, Love, Minor Character Death, Minor Injuries, Suki-centric, and wilder girls, azula mai and ty lee are there for a sentence, heavily inspired by on earth we're briefly gorgeous, i gave the kyoshi warriors names!! and backstories!, i'm giving the gays everything they ever wanted, me creating tags for x-centric fics, not as much fluff as usual :(, yes that's a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25213216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jublis/pseuds/jublis
Summary: “When I grow up,” Suki tells Vanu, “I’m going to be the best Kyoshi Warrior on this island, and I’m going to stop the war.”Vanu puts his warm hand on her shoulder, squeezing lightly. “I know, Suki,” he says, brown eyes downcast. The solemn expression on his face looks like it fits more comfortably into his skin and wrinkles than the kind smile ever did.He doesn’t ask her why she thinks she’ll be able to stop it all by herself. He doesn’t remind her that the war has been going on for over a hundred years, and that the Avatar is dead. He doesn’t tell her that the most useful thing she can do with her hands while they’re still empty is to hold on.Vanu moves Suki’s fingers and shows her how to handle the weapon properly.Or, Suki grows up, falls in love, bleeds, and ends the war. Not necessarily in that order.
Relationships: Kyoshi Warriors & Suki, Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Sokka/Suki/Zuko (Avatar), Suki & Zuko (Avatar), Suki/Original Female Character
Series: heirloom [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1808977
Comments: 80
Kudos: 479





	and we will sing to everything the stories of where we have been

**Author's Note:**

> hi there! so! the fact that there aren't any suki centric fics in this fandom is lesbophobic and i won't stand for it!
> 
> so, here you go. beware for excessive references to on earth we're briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong & wilder girls by rory powers.
> 
> title is from "atoms," by nana grizol

Suki is nine years old when she picks up the warrior’s fan for the first time.

She hasn’t seen her mother in years, but as she stares down the sharp edges of the weapon, she can’t help but think of stretch of her lips, the way her incisives were just a little too pointy for comfort, how the baring of teeth never softened any part of her face. The smile of a woman of war. The metal in Suki’s hands is the same greyish color that her eyes were.

Suki doesn’t have her mother’s eyes. She doesn’t have the eyes of anyone else in Kyoshi Island, either. The other girls in her boarding room say they’re pretty, but they say the word _pretty_ the same way they would say _dangerous_ , the same way they would say _different_. Suki kisses a boy for the first time behind the common house when the celebrations for Kyoshi’s Day run late, and even though it’s so dark she can barely even see his face, he tells her to close her eyes first. 

The elders tell her that her mother was a very brave woman. That she’d washed up on their shores with nothing but the clothes on her back and a pregnant belly, hands already clenched into fists as if waiting to fight for her space. _It was on a moonless night,_ they say. _No light to guide her, but she made it to the village anyway. And a few weeks later, you were born._

They say she should be proud. Her mother was one of their best.

But they never told Suki her name.

Suki only barely had time to learn how to call that woman _Mama_ before she was gone. In the dead of night, with the small creaks of her steps on the floor of the house they shared with two other families, like a story come full circle. It wasn’t sickness that took her, but the sea; the Kyoshi Warriors on patrol the next morning found the only pair of shoes she owned on the shore, and one of their merchant boats missing. Suki doesn’t like to think about the blue in her eyes, but she has a pretty good idea where it came from.

She runs her fingers through the cold surface, a feeling of anticipation rising in her chest. It’s a sunny, mild day, and Suki feels warm to her very bones, standing inside the house where Avatar Kyoshi lived in her final days. It’s not very impressive, and it isn’t even the first time she’s been there, either. Sifu Khan likes to take all her students there every year, when Kyoshi’s Day draws closer, and Suki has never missed a day in all the years she’d been under Khan’s care at the girl’s boarding house, on the far edge of the village. The older woman waits by the door as the little girls roam from artifact to artifact, pulling each other’s hairs and squealing with laughter as they dare each other to touch the tapestry on the back of the house. Kyoshi’s crown, they call it. _Who can reach Kyoshi’s crown, all the way up, frowning down?_

It’s only a fun game until you grow taller. In Kyoshi Island, that never takes too long.

Vanu smiles at Suki when he sees the way her hands curl around the fan. “An admirer, huh?”, he asks, his old face wrinkled and impish. He has strange features and a skin so dark it makes all his teeth looks like they’re glowing; as long as she’s been alive, she’s never once seen the man too far from this place, and as the girls get progressively louder, he inches closer to her, arms crossed. “I didn’t know you liked history, Suki.”

Suki makes a face. “History’s fine,” she says. “I just like holding it.”

“Holding what?” Vanu says. “History?”

“No,” she says, a slight edge of irritation in her voice. She doesn’t like when people pretend they don’t understand what she’s saying, even when she couldn’t be more clear. “The fan.”

Vanu’s smile turns sad. They both know what she means now.

Not every girl on the island becomes a Kyoshi Warrior, and the ones that do never last too long. The war may have not reached them yet, but they’re all children of it nonetheless; those who fight die young, and those who don’t wipe the blood off their faces in their final moments, and cradle their face in their hands, and sing them to sleep. Suki remembers, last summer, when one of the warriors got injured in a pirate raid—a sword clean through her back, cracking her ribs. She was the daughter of one of the elders in the boarding house, and they managed to bring her back before she was gone.

_I’m so sorry, mother_ , she’d whispered, red lips smudged, her makeup dribbling like blood down her face. _I’m so, so sorry. I thought I’d have more time. I thought I’d get to live._

_Oh, my baby_ , her mother had said, just as quietly, her pale hands touching her daughter’s chest as if to keep the heartbeats there. _Oh, my girl. It’s alright. I already knew. When you first put on that dress, I already knew._

“When I grow up,” Suki tells Vanu, “I’m going to be the best Kyoshi Warrior on this island, and I’m going to stop the war.”

Vanu puts his warm hand on her shoulder, squeezing lightly. “I know, Suki,” he says, brown eyes downcast. The solemn expression on his face looks like it fits more comfortably into his skin and wrinkles than the kind smile ever did.

He doesn’t ask her why she thinks she’ll be able to stop it all by herself. He doesn’t remind her that the war has been going on for over a hundred years, and that the Avatar is dead. He doesn’t tell her that the most useful thing she can do with her hands while they’re still empty is to hold on.

Vanu moves Suki’s fingers and shows her how to handle the weapon properly.

**. . .**

She starts her training when she’s twelve, a year earlier than the trials usually begin. 

The head of the Kyoshi Warriors visits the boarding house every year, looking for the best candidates to go through the selection process. She’s tall, lean and wiry, but quick on her feet and with an easy smile; the headscarf she wears under the traditional headdress is always bright blue, and Suki might be a little bit in love. There’s been five different leaders since Suki was small, and she always rolls their names around her tongue as she lays on her mattress, late at night. She likes this one best. Sana, Sana, Sana. 

The rooms are divided by age, and Suki shares hers with four other girls. They’re not friends, but she doesn’t mind them; she’s never heard either of the twins utter a word, except for small cries in their sleep, and the other two girls are content to talk to each other instead of Suki, who’s been in here for longer. She’s older than all of them by a few months, and if nothing happens, she’ll pass on to the young women’s quarters as soon as she turns thirteen, and be expected to start an apprenticeship in the village to earn her keep.

She’s not letting that happen.

When Sana arrives, Suki is standing outside, arms crossed, leaning against the door of the house like she hasn’t a care in the word. In one hand, she twirls a dagger that she took from the butcher’s daughter in exchange for a peck on the lips. She’s been practicing for weeks, familiarizing herself with the weight and feel of it on her hands, using the trees in the backyard as targets. Suki is no prodigy, but she’s also no stranger to sharpness. She is not afraid to bite and scratch at life until it gives her what she wants.

And she wants to fight. 

Suki can tell the moment Sana notices her, slowing her step until they’re standing right across from each other. Sana tilts her head, a curious expression on her gentle face. The bright blue of her scarf makes her look like a kind spirit, but Suki already knows not to be fooled. She lifts her chin at her in challenge, hand in the hilt of her dagger. It does not tremble in her grip. 

Young girl and warrior look at each other. The warrior is also a young girl, and the young girl wants to be a warrior. Kyoshi Island is a place that always travels in circles, like a serpent eating its own tail. 

Sana steps closer, posture relaxed. Suki looks at the fans in her belt with something that feels almost like hunger. 

“You know,” Sana says. Her voice is raspy and low; rumor is that one time she was nearly choked to death by a boy who fancied himself worthy of joining the Kyoshi Warriors. He failed the first lesson—to only use his opponent’s strength against them. She leans against the wall the same way Suki is, and it sends something thrilling down her spine. “I’ve seen too many kids like you. Dirty faces. Scraped knees.” Sana narrows her eyes. “Thirsty for life.”

Suki doesn’t look away. “You call me a kid,” she says, “like you’re not one yourself.”

Sana smiles like she can’t help it, dawning on her face like a sunrise. “I suppose that’s fair,” she says, adjusting the scarf around her face. She glances at the door, where Sifu Khan is probably waiting for her, and then back at Suki, with an unreadable look in her eyes. “You’re not of age, are you?”

“No,” Suki answers, heart in her throat. Her palms are sweating, but the grip on the dagger never falters. She twirls it around once, twice, three times.

Sana levels her with a stare that Suki understands all too well. She doesn’t look surprised, or angry, or sad. She looks like she’s watching a story unfold, a story she’s seen a million times before. She looks like she already knows how this will end.

“They never really are,” Sana says. “When it counts the most, they never really are.”

They send for her at dawn the next day. Suki wraps up her belongings with the only dress she owns, a brown and hand-me-down gift from Sifu Khan that’s entirely too big for her. By the time she gets to the Kyoshi Warrior’s quarters, all the way across the village, her dagger has ripped through the cloth. She throws it away. 

**. . .**

In her first year of training, she breaks her arm. In the second, it’s a sprained knee and a bruise that covers most of her torso, wrapping around her back and stomach. In the third year, she receives her first battle scar, a jagged, ugly thing across her collarbone. The pirates that they fight off aren’t a huge threat, but in the past few months, they’ve been getting bolder. They made it almost to the borders of the village before the Kyoshi Warriors were able to surround them, coming from all sides. It’s the first time Suki is allowed out on the field, but not the first time they have been here. Their island is the worst kept secret in the world.

Suki doesn’t feel the wound until she’s back at the quarters, taking off her makeup. Her eyebrow is a little crooked, but she’s getting the hang of it. This is the only place she’s ever lived in that has mirrors, and for the first weeks, she could barely look at her own reflection. The house is narrow, standing up to three floors, wooden and as well kept as it gets. There’s not much decoration, except or the images of former fighters lining the walls of the stairs leading up and down from floors, in no particular order or size. _They worked with what they could at the time_ , Sana told her, when Suki first arrived. _The point is being remembered. That’s the only point._

She still shares her room, but this time with only two other girls. It’s one of them, Lihn, who notices the slow drip of blood down Suki’s neck, after she takes off her gear. They have a small staring contests, Lihn gesturing wildly at it, while Suki only frowns, confused, until her fingers find the sticky red covering her front. She hisses as she presses on it, but doesn’t flinch. 

“It’s not bad,” she says, rubbing her stained hand against the dark cloth of her sleeping pants. “I’ve had worse.”

Lihn rolls her eyes at her, pulling Suki by the arm to sit down at the bed. There’s one on each corner of the room except for the door, and Suki’s is the closest to the mirror. “You stay here while I get some bandages,” she says. “We’ve all had _worse_ , but this is the sort of wound that you don’t realize it’s there until it’s killing you.”

“ _Killing_ you,” Aiya repeats in a high pitched voice, rolling around in her own bed. Her dark hair is tied in buns on either side of her head, dark skin glistening with sweat from the warm night. As the only earthbender of the Kyoshi Warriors, her sleeping clothes are always streaked with dirt. “You’d think Suki was bleeding out from a stomach wound. It’s just a scratch, Lihn.”

Suki snorts, leaning back on the mattress by the elbows. “They’re going to put it on my grave,” she says, solemnly. “Here lies Suki, beloved by all. Died because a pirate scratched her with his nails. She will be dearly missed.”

Lihn glares at both of them, and leaves to get what she needs without saying a word. Suki watches her go, a small smile playing at her lips. She doesn’t allow herself many things, but she can have this. She can have the glances and the lingering hands and the one time where they were on night patrol together and Suki was convinced Lihn was going to lean down and finally get it over with, but she didn’t. Suki is fine, she really is, if this is the closest she can get her —she doesn’t want a huge romance. This was never her story. 

Aiya knows. “I’ll never understand what you see in her,” she says, scrunching her nose at the door. “But you can’t help love, I guess.”

“I never said anything about love,” Suki answers, face warm. “But I like her. I even like that she doesn’t always like me.”

“That sounds like love to me,” Aiya sing-songs. Suki throws a pillow at her to shut her up the moment Lihn walks back in, carrying an armful of oils and bandages and a small bowl of warm water to clean the wound. She sits down in front of Suki and raises her eyebrows, motioning for her to take off the shirt she’d put back on.

Years of sharing her space have made her pretty desensitized for things like this, but Suki is only human. She takes it off and leans her head back to the ceiling, closing her eyes so she doesn’t have to see how close they are, or the curve of Lihn’s neck, or the dimple on her left cheek as she hisses at Aiya to be silent. 

When Lihn’s fingers graze her skin, Suki shivers. She doesn’t dare look, but Lihn’s breaths are measured and careful, warm and sweet in the small world that is this room, like the kindling for a fire where storytellers come and tell their tales. It’s a quiet affair; Lihn splashes warm water over the cut, then pats it down with a towel, and wraps the bandages from Suki’s collarbone all the way to the tip of her shoulder, with the practiced ease. Her touches don’t linger, but Suki feels all of them like they’re lighting her up from the inside. If you cut her, she would shine. 

When Suki opens her eyes, Lihn’s pupils are so dilated her muddy gold eyes are nearly black. Aiya is already asleep. Suki’s lips part in their own accord.

“It’ll scar,” Lihn says, quietly. Her voice is rougher than normal, and though she’s done, she doesn’t pull away.

Suki shakes her head. “I don’t mind,” she says. “It was only a matter of time, anyway.”

Lihn’s eyes flicker down her face, but she still doesn’t move. “I wasn’t exaggerating,” she says, “when I said that this is the sort of thing that bleeds until it’s killing you.” She raises one hand, placing it on Suki’s cheek, featherlight and warm as a thousand suns. Then she leans down and presses a kiss on the side of Suki’s lips, too close but not close enough. “You know how we were born from war,” she whispers, words pressed against skin. “We know how this ends. We’ve seen it before.”

“Please,” Suki says, holding Lihn’s hand in place. She feels dazed, like she spent hours on end under the scorching sun, every inch of her skin burning and alive. “Can we pretend that this is the first time?”

Lihn smiles.

**. . .**

The pirates come back four months later. They’re even bolder now, stronger. Kyoshi Island is the world’s worst kept secret, and everyone keeps trying to outsmart each other while reaching for it. It’s only a matter of time before the Fire Nation gets the idea, too. 

The Kyoshi Warriors barely make it. Some of the older civilians pitch in to help, taking up swords and daggers and bows from the armory and stepping in to fight. Suki has never seen so much blood at once before.

The dust settles after five days. The girls stagger back to their quarters, limping and leaning on each other. Suki’s first battle scar is worlds away; she must have added on at least a dozen since last week.

The Kyoshi Warriors are practical before anything. By sundown, the list of casualties has been posted up on the front door of the house, the names scratched and smudged on the parchment, red dotting its edges. Suki elbows her way through the small crowd to reach it, and when she does, Aiya is already there, earth-caked hands covering her mouth. She looks at Suki with red-rimmed eyes, though no tears fall.

Suki reads the list, and her tongue tastes like salt and metal. 

Sana didn’t survive the attack. Neither did Lihn. 

**. . .**

The head of the Kyoshi Warriors is usually the eldest, most experienced girl in the group. For Suki’s case, they make an exception.

Their numbers have been dwindling in the past two years or so; the raids haven’t stopped, and casualties are rampant, but more than that, a steadily growing amount of girls have taken off their makeup and never put it back on again. They leave, in one way or the other; they marry off some guy in the village and raise his children, or take what little money they have and set off to the mainland, carrying only the clothes on their body and blood under their fingernails.

After Lihn died, Aiya stayed a few more months, but Suki knew it wouldn’t last. She catches her sneaking out of their room in mid-Winter, all of her clothes wrapped around her to fight off the cold, and the tiredness Suki feels is so heavy she nearly stumbles. 

“You could come with me,” Aiya says, her hands gripping the satchel around her shoulder. “You could. You’ve been miserable since—since Lihn. This could be a fresh start. For both of us.”

Suki hears the undertone in Aiya’s voice, the question she’s really asking. She looks at those sad, green eyes, and shakes her head. “The time isn’t right,” she hears herself saying. “I can’t leave just yet.”

Aiya’s lips twitch, like she already expected the answer. “I never pegged you as someone who believes in fate,” she says, voice catching. She goes for a smile, but it falls flat. “So. Do you think the Spirits have any plans for us?”

Suki has never believed in the Spirits, and fate is a flimsy idea at best. It’s the sort of thing you hear around a fire, on nights so dark they bleed into you, with a storyteller’s voice in your ears. It’s not the sort of thing she’d carved this little life for. But something in her gut won’t budge, stubbornly making her stay in place, and wait. _It’s not time yet. It’s not time yet._ She’s always believed she’d die in battle, on her own terms, and that’s enough for her. It’s not like any sort of different ending is waiting for her across the shoreline. 

“I think,” she says, “that we are all of us bound to this war no matter where we go. And I don’t believe in running away,” she adds, not unkindly, but Aiya flinches anyway. “You always just take yourself with you.”

Aiya blinks at her, and pulls the door open. “Goodbye, Suki.”

Suki sits down on her bed, trying not to look at the empty corners of their—of her—room. “Goodbye, Aiya.”

It’s the first time she’s ever gotten the chance to say that.

**. . .**

The Avatar is alive and Kyoshi Island went up in flames. 

When the Fire Nation ships docked on their shores, Suki had geared up with the other girls, the other women, that she was responsible for. She’d dashed her makeup on like it was the last chance she’d ever get to make something right. And then, as she was about to open her mouth to lead them, one of the warriors had grabbed her arm.

Nayka was one of their oldest by a considerable amount, nearing her mid-twenties. If she ever felt bitter at following the orders of a girl nearly ten years younger than her, she never said a word. But on that day, she’d risen to her full height, and looked Suki straight in the eye.

“You,” she’d said, squeezing Suki for emphasis. “You take these girls and go. Don’t let this be your last stand.”

This was always going to be her last stand, Suki thinks, but doesn’t say. The older women rally behind Nayka, their jaws set, and Suki has to make a decision. 

So she takes her girls and leaves. She’s never set foot outside of this island, has never known home anywhere other than on dusty houses made of old wood, but she takes the last merchant ship they have and puts the others to work, tying ropes and opening sails and settling their supplies as best they could so they can make it to the mainland. There are five of them, Suki included, and if any of them are as terrified as she feels, they don’t show it. Kaya places herself next to the sail and doesn’t budge, eyes on the horizon; her mother was a runaway from the Northern Water Tribe, and she and her twin sister, Yumi, are the best equipped to get them all across safely. Suki sits down on the ground between Naomi and Mahina and cries like her heart is being ripped out of her chest.

None of the girls have ever seen her cry. Suki doesn’t remember the last time she did, either. She didn’t cry when Lihn died, or when Aiya left, or even when she broke her first bone. She swallowed the pain up like it was a bitter pill, and let it settle down on her stomach, and thought there was nothing more to it. 

Now, she cries and cries. There are two sets of hands on her shoulders and Suki leans into them, covering her face with her arms, trying to hold something together. The wind blows. 

When she finally opens her eyes, she looks at the sky. It’s unbearably blue, wide and all-encompassing, and it makes her think of an easy smile and dark skin and a startled sigh as her lips met his cheek.

Suki wonders. 

**. . .**

She works at the immigration center for Ba Sing Se for two months before she catches sight of them again. By then, she’s already heard a thousand different rumors about the Avatar and his friends and the Fire Nation prince.

It’s a sad story, the prince’s. Suki has heard many things, but only two of them are repeated often enough for her to actually believe them. The scar and the betrayal. The betrayal and the scar. And maybe she’s heard it too many times—she spots an old man and a boy together, once. The boy has a scar covering half of his face, its edges smooth and intentional, the skin jagged and rough; the only time she sees him let his guard down at all is when the old man puts his hand on his shoulder, guiding him forward. Then they’re gone.

Recognizing the blue arrows is like a breath of fresh air.

Sokka looks the same, his smile taking over his whole face when he recognizes her. Katara hugs her tightly, wrapping her arms around Suki’s neck despite how much taller Suki is. Aang bounces around Suki for nearly a whole minute, chatting excitedly about what they’d been up to since they last saw each other, though the bags under his eyes seem to suggest that not everything has been fun and games. The other girl—Toph, she learns—gives a small salute in her general direction, an unsure tilt of her head.

It’s a fun couple of days. She gets to wear her clothes again, so excited to put on that goddamn lipstick that she nearly cries, and barely manages to stammer the words out to Naomi before she’s dashing across the station, beaming smile on her lips as she reaches for Sokka. 

She knows he misunderstood when she said she was going with them. He thought she’d stay with them, go all the way to Ba Sing Se, hold his hand and kiss him goodnight and whisper sweet nothings into his ears. The thing is, she likes Sokka. And maybe she does want to hold his hand and kiss him goodnight and good morning until they’re both breathless. But the thing is, they barely even know each other yet. And she still has work to do.

They almost kiss under the moonlight, but he pulls away. Suki doesn’t believe in Spirits, not the kind that would actually make a difference, but for a moment, she wonders. If this is Lihn’s way of saying that their story isn’t over yet. Of saying that Suki is selfish for wanting this, for wanting him, when she never even shed a tear for _her_. 

But Suki knows she’s allowed to want Sokka. She knew as well as Lihn did that whatever they had was always more out of need than anything else. It wasn’t a great romance. It was just a sad chapter.

And when Sokka kisses her, under the sunlight, Suki can only thing that, whatever this is, it’s meant to be more than a few pages long. 

**. . .**

Ba Sing Se is under threat, and as the still acting leader of the Kyoshi Warriors, Suki offers their services to the Earth King. She’s never held much loyalty to the Earth Kingdom as a concept—she barely even knows the guy’s name—but she remembers Nayka’s words. Her last stand will not be here, where people come to pretend they’re running from a endless war, when they’re really just reaching for another hopeless battle all over again. 

Aang told Suki they’d lost Appa, on their way across The Serpent’s Pass. He told her they have no idea where he is.

Suki finds him.

Of all the things she’s seen and done, the image of Appa, cowering away from her, whining like he’s begging her to go away, is almost enough to break her entirely. She sees Yumi’s pressed lips and Mahina’s shiny eyes and the silence sitting between all of them. Suki tells them it’s their duty to help the Avatar’s bison, but they all know. They would do this even if it wasn’t for anything bigger than their own hearts.

Suki finally meets the Fire Nation princess. She thinks of the boy she saw on the station all those weeks ago, the paleness of his skin and dark, short hair, and knows. 

There’s a girl throwing knives and another one jumping around from tree to tree, hitting Suki’s girls in a way that made them drop to the ground. Suki yells at Appa to leave, uses fire to scare him away, and before she can feel any guilt, she turns to Princess Azula and bares her teeth.

The princess wins. But Suki knows the draw of blood when she sees it, and none of them walk away unscathed.

**. . .**

She doesn’t want to talk about Boiling Rock.

Being separated from her girls is hard enough. Suki’s always been _alone_ , but she’s also always been surrounded by people. She doesn’t know what to do with the emptiness of her cell, or the way the other prisoners steer away from her when they see her, or how the guards always stare too long when she’s on cleaning duty in the first floor, and in the second floor, and in the third floor.

Breathing outside her door, late at night. Whispers of vile words and hands that linger and rough laughter and she can’t do a fucking think about it.

She doesn’t want to talk about Boiling Rock. 

**. . .**

Sokka comes to rescue her, the idiot. Alongside him is the traitor Fire Nation prince—Zuko, he introduces himself, as if she didn’t know already, as if he never expected her to.

It takes half a day for one of them to be caught. Incredibly enough, it isn’t Sokka. 

“So,” Suki says, leaning forward on her broom. Other than the guard half-asleep down the hall and Zuko mopping the floors next to her, they’re completely alone. “How did you get roped into all of this? Last I heard, you’d made your way back to the Fire Nation in good graces.”

Zuko freezes, his hands tightening around the mop handle. His hair is much longer than she remembers, falling in front of his eyes, and his scar seems more like a bruise than the thing itself. “I did,” he says, haltingly. Suki hasn’t heard him speak much, and she always startles a little at how rough it is. He looks so young. “I thought I had everything I’d ever wanted. Turns out,” he adds, as an afterthought, “everything I’d ever wanted was fucking bullshit.”

Suki claps a hand in front of her mouth, trying to swallow down her smile. “Well,” she says, airily, turning back to the task at hand, “better late than never, huh?”

Zuko looks at her strangely, his lips twitching. Something softens in him—his shoulders drop a little, and his posture sags, and she hadn’t realized just how tightly he’d been holding himself before. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Better late than never.”

They stay silent for a few more moments. The bell tolls, signaling the ending of a shift and the beginning of another, and the guard that was supposed to be watching them startles awake, gesturing at Suki and Zuko to get a move on. 

As they start down the hall for the courtyard, Suki turns to Zuko and quirks one eyebrow. She misses the makeup, but she bites that thought down. 

“Off topic, but I just wanted to ask,” she says. “What the fuck was going through your head when I said you burned down my village, and you went, _‘Nice to see you again?_ ’”

Zuko flushes bright red all the way up to his scalp, and does an awesome impression of a turtleduck when he tries to hide his face on the collar of his shirt without seeming to do like he’s doing it. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m not a people person.”

“Ah,” Suki says. “I assume your sister inherited that trait, then? Lovely girl. Loved the lipstick. Could have done a bit without the whole, you know, being a crazy, murderous colonizer.”

Zuko snorts. “That would be Azula,” he says, and then frowns. “Wait. You’ve met her?”

“Something like that,” Suki answers, flexing her fingers. “My fist met her face. Twice.”

Zuko laughs so loud he tears up, a fist pressed against his mouth to muffle the noises. Suki smiles so hard it seems like her face is going to break in half, like light would come pouring out of her if it did so. 

Every time they meet each other’s eyes during that day, they both burst out laughing. It’s nice. Suki has had roommates before. She’s had Lihn and Aiya and her girls, and she has Sokka. But she’s never had a best friend before.

**. . .**

When the war is over, Suki thinks of the mother she never knew and her razor-sharp edges, thinks of the young girl inside her head and her bloody fists and scraped knees and the way she learned to bare her teeth before she ever learned how to smile. Suki thinks of Lihn, and how she thought that everything they had was the next moment they could reach for, and the next, and the next, until it was gone. She thinks of Aiya and wonders if she ever made it to the mainland through the choppy seawater of winter, if she got the one thing she’d ever wanted, that Suki couldn’t give her. She thinks of Nayka and the older women, of Vanu and the way he lived and died in that same piece of land, of the way they all thought that’s the only thing they were destined for.

Kyoshi Island used to be the world’s worst kept secret. It isn’t anymore, not with the Kyoshi Warriors roaming the halls of the Fire Nation palace, not with Suki as the head of guards, not with Suki’s boyfriend also being the Fire Lord’s boyfriend.

We know how this ends. We’ve seen it a thousand times. After a hundred years, the war is over. The children live and wonder how long it will take for them to be able to say their parents’ names and have them mean only their names, and not what they left behind. Like snow covering the particulars of the city, in the future, they’ll say this never happened, that this survival was only a myth. 

But Suki knows. She holds Zuko as he shakes and shakes after another nightmare, and kisses Sokka good morning, and lets them both hold her hands as the dam finally breaks and she cracks, crying until there’s nothing left inside her except for a hollowing sense of relief. 

They were real. They laughed knowing joy would tear the stitches from their lips. Lihn told Suki that they were born from war, and maybe that’s true. But they were also destined for something bigger than themselves. They were destined for beauty.

**Author's Note:**

> so! yeah. love love love this girl. i hope i did her justice and that you like this as much as i do!
> 
> as always, comments and kudos are appreciated. if you want to yell at me, you can do that on twitter @bornfrombeauty. yes, my @ is exactly what you're thinking.


End file.
